Heather Kai Smith – 2013-14 Chris J Melnychuk Scholarship Winner

Heather Kai Smith is an artist, animator and illustrator from Calgary, AB, Canada. Over the past ten years Smith has actively contributed to her local arts community through artist-run centre directorial work and workshop facilitation, and has regularly exhibited her artwork locally and abroad. Smith has attended residencies in Germany and New Mexico and has participated in workshops, festivals and exhibitions across Canada and the United States. Her practice is rooted in examining sincerity of self through the act of production, the culture of display and the desire to give the invisible a shape. She is currently attending Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC in their Master’s of Applied Arts program.

A Woman Comes Into The Room is a series of moving drawings inspired by and set to Alice Notley’s poem from The Readings at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, recorded February 21, 1979. The film explores representations of femininity, the anonymous woman and abstraction through line. Using rotoscoping techniques on historical found footage, the film acts as a visual poem to discuss the fleeting feminine form.